IRVING, Texas — If there is such a creature as a higher football power, Dallas Cowboys fans - despite two consecutive victories - are continuing to curse the beast.
Then again, whoever designed this season has a sense of humor and you have to appreciate that.
Consider the current work of art known as the Cowboys - a team that:
Began the season as the favorite to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl, only to lose seven of its first eight games.
Lost the starting quarterback - who’d been losing - and replaced him with a 38-year-old relic, who had a 46-69 record as a starter and was 10-26 in his last 36 starts. And now he’s winning.
Had an owner who had never fired a coach in midseason but turned into an owner who then fired the coach at midseason.
Featured a running back who has a $45 million contract and watched as he stumbled his way to fewer than 300 yards in the first 10 games, all the while being lauded by the coaching staff.
Yes, the football gods are giggling mischievously as they have watched these Cowboys go from universally great, to slightly cursed,to very bad to surprisingly good.
“Wild would be pretty close to it,” punter Mat McBriar said when asked to describe the season. “It’s been a wild ride. You never expect your coach to be fired.”
To their credit, the Cowboys did respond to Jason Garrett replacing Wade Phillips.
Garrett is 2-0 since taking over and the Cowboys have outscored opponents 68-39.
In eight games under Phillips, the Cowboys were outscored 232-161.
“We’ve done a better job of taking care of the football first and foremost, making it more difficult for offenses to drive the field against our defense,” Garrett said.
“And I think when we do that, our defense becomes difficult to play against. It’s hard to drive the ball in this league and score points. So we’re taking care of the football. We’ve won the turnover battle in each of the last two games, and I think that’s helped us.”
In the first eight games of the season, the Cowboys had 19 turnovers while opponents had 10. In the victories over the New York Giants and Detroit Lions, Dallas had two turnovers and opponents had five.
“The thing is, we’re avoiding disasters,” quarterback Jon Kitnasaid.
Since taking over for Tony Romo, who broke his collarbone in the New York Giants game on Oct. 25, Kitna has steadily improved. He threw for 379 yards in his first start against Jacksonville, but he had four interceptions with three of those tipped.
After a team-wide disaster in Green Bay, Kitna has led the Cowboys to two victories in starkly different manners.
In the 33-20 victory over the Giants, Kitna passed for 327 yards and three touchdowns. In the 35-19 victory over the Detroit Lions on Sunday, he threw for only 147 yards, but three passes went for touchdowns.
And Kitna, who has never been accused of being a scrambler, stunned everyone - including himself - with a 29-yard bootleg for a touchdown.
“Fortunately for me,” he said, “my job was to make sure I didn’t fall down.”
Even the Cowboys’ anemic running game improved on Sunday. For only the fifth time this season, they surpassed 100 yards. Kitna gained 40 yards on four carries, which was better than the 36 yards on 13 carries by Marion Barber, who has struggled all year.
In 2008, Barber signed a sevenyear, $45 million contract. This season, he has rushed for 294 yards in 10 games. Forty-one NFL running backs have rushed for more yards this season. Yet Cowboys coaches say he is doing exactly what they want him to do.
Since Jerry Jones made the unprecedented move of replacing the head coach during the season, the Cowboys have rallied under Garrett and behind Kitna.
And even though they know it might be too late to mount a charge for the playoffs, they are playing like they have a chance.
“It’s sort of like a playoff game for us every week,” said McBriar, who at one point in the season might have been the team MVP with his well-placed, booming punts. “Even if we finish 9-7, it might not be good enough. But we’re having fun again.
“You look at the beginning of the year, it was like, ‘Are they going to go to the Super Bowl?’ Then there was a time we’d lost games and we said, ‘Now we can go 14-0, now 13-0, now 12-0.’ But now it really is where we’re just thinking about New Orleans.”
The ago-old cliche of taking one game at a time is not only in play, but now a Cowboys mantra. The football gods wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sports, Pages 26 on 11/25/2010